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ARG Las Vegas and Pro-Play Games Atlanta, as well as several local ARG invite events are quickly nearing this weekend, and you may still be on the fence of what to play. Don't fret, as you're in luck! This past weekend, a large 249 person event took place, the European Open Championship, and it should give us a glimpse of what to expect at your event of choice. Janemba Mill ended up taking first place and third place, with a deadly Broly Victory Strike deck taking second. There were also other successful decks in the top 16. This gives us a great starting point at what to anticipate this weekend to help prepare us. Let's take a look a deeper at a few of those top deck lists, discuss their strengths, discuss their weaknesses, and finally go over what I would personally go in with to an event this weekend. Let's start with the tournament winner - Janemba.

Janemba Mill
This deck has been floating around since the US Nationals, with a recent win at the Atlantic City Pro-Play Tour 2019. The idea of this deck is to stall out the game as much as possible, and discard your opponent's deck. Occasionally, the deck can also steal games with pushing damage as well, especially if your opponent is hesitating on drawing cards with game effects. Let's take a look at the winner's list...

A strong late game, with an impeccable defense makes pushing last damage against this deck difficult, with an inevitability to end the game with milling the opponent to death. Consistent battle card removal also makes clearing the board a breeze compared to most meta decks.

Easy to pilot. Don't spend all your energy every turn and keep it for defense, or if you do spend it, keep a Dimension Magic handy. After watching a player pilot the deck (check out some of the past streams from either Pro-Play Games or this past weekend's Euro Championship) and getting in a few practice games, you should be good to go.

Weaknesses:

Early aggression can catch the deck off guard if your hand is flooded with 1 cost combo cards and no Senzu Beans, or if they are able to break past the defenses early. If your life goes from five to three, you're going to have a more difficult time blocking damage, as 4 life is the sweet spot in life management. This is a deck where an early OTK (one turn kill) can catch you given the opportunity.

Mirror match can be abysmal. While the better player always has experience and ideally would come out on top, the match can end over who draws faster and more frequent Janembas. This particular build has thought of that, and has included four copies of each and four Saike Demon for faster and cheaper Janembas.

Broly Height of Mastery Victory Strike
This is the second deck type we'll be taking a look at and it is the latest entry on the top tier list. Essentially the deck uses two new promo cards, the new leader Broly, the Awakened Threat (P-092) and the just-released battle card Son Goku, Path to Greatness (P-115) promo card to swap into the absurd Height of Mastery Son Goku (BT4-075), shutting down the opponent's options to counter the onslaught of attacks that would be heading the opponent's way. To go over-the-top, the winner used Son Goku the Awakened Power () to push out an auto win against several decks, like his top 4 match against a Janemba player. However, a very similar list that went undefeated in the swiss rounds did not run the card, and was more focused on being aggressive. For this article, let's take a look at the winner's list...

Winning with this deck is very easy turn 4, as long as you draw your cards. Aggressive versions of the Broly, the Awakened Threat can win even faster if you catch the opponent off-guard. The deck can easily push its victory condition with Bad Ring Laser as a stop gap if they are able to counter the Height of Mastery Son Goku play.

The deck has a lot of defensive options, like Time Magic and Cold Bloodlust to stop the opponent's key battle cards, like Foreseeing Hit and Haru Haru, Attacker Majin.

Weaknesses:

Janemba can be a weakness. It can mill your win conditions. This is fixed with Trunks, Power Overseeing Time being able to grab them from the drop area, but this does slow your play down, and your answer to mill can be discarded as well. Janemba can also block your win-condition. If the combo doesn't have a substantial amount of combo power to back it up, it can easily outlive the onslaught of the attack.

Overrunning the board with blockers. Multiple blockers means less energy being tapped down which means more options the opponent has to stop you from going off against them.

This deck does have a very linear style of play (Son Goku, Path to Greatness - > Height of Mastery Son Goku -> Son Goku, the Awakened Power), and because of that, things don't always go the ideal way. It does take a bit of ingenuity to know when to ditch the plan of going straight combo and going to a more aggressive route (say against a Janemba player trying to mill you out; this is what happened in the finals match between Augusto Gavaia and Casper Hersø Hansen). I do believe this weakness is easily patch-able, and players are going to adapt and play a more aggressive version of this deck that makes it less combo based, and more on smarter plays which will put it at an even better position than it is in today.

Red Pan
This is a deck that has seen some niche play and success from previous events, and has been popularized by the likes of Tim Palacios, and Scott Dashy. This past weekend, it saw two top 8 placings at the event. This is probably the most "fair" deck on the lists that showed up, but don't underestimate its strength. Well placed Chain Attack trunks into Zen-oh, the Plain God or Fearless Pan could end the game for the opponent very quickly. Let's look at one of the top 8 deck lists...

Pan is not an aggro deck. Pan is mid-range deck that creates openings where it can and combat the opponent's game plan. Ping the opponent's life, push damage where you can, and placing down a well timed Chain Attack Trunks into Zen-Oh, The Plain God can heavily put the game into your favor. In addition, Pan has a strong burst when she awakens, usually netting you two cards, two extra energy , and two +5K modifiers that can decimate the opponent with the appropriate end game cards like Fearless Pan or Foreseeing Hit. Afterimage Technique, while not a true negate for an attack, is usually better in most cases (sans against Mira, Creator Absorbed).

Weaknesses:

Against the two previously posted decks, Pan is the underdog. Against Janemba, you're going to want to create a sizeable board early, push damage as much as you can, and place a well timed Chain Attack / Zen-Oh late game to reduce the overwhelming amount of defense that Janemba can have at times. To finish the game, Fearless Pan is your all-star as amassing a significant amount of Double Strikes could push damage to where you want it to be. Against Broly, it depends on how they are playing it. If they are playing combo, and you started first in the game, Foreseeing Hit can easily shut them down. If they are playing aggro, you're going to want to survive as much, using your Afterimage Techniques at the appropriate times (if you can kill a Bardock, the Progenitor with them, even better), and last until turn 4 where you need to drop a Foreseeing Hit to stall the combo out and try to push the last 3-4 damage you need.

Shenron - This is the deck Pan really wants to avoid. It's very rough, as they don't attack you early so you're not drawing up cards from your life. You'll have to rely on Digging Deep Vegeta to help you awaken and use the awaken turn as much as you possibly can to kill the opponent before they set up and kill you. If you can manage to set up a bit, you could be able to catch them with a well-timed Chain Attack Trunks into Zen-Oh, The Plain God, or a perfectly placed Foreseeing Hit. But if you don't see those cards, it can be over for you quickly. Your opponent will set up their kill turn, and it will be game over.

Those were just some of the lists that did well this past weekend. There were other successful decks as well, such as several different Shenron builds, a Broly Veggies build, Red Frieza variants (most Red/Yellow, but there was a mono-Red build), and even a Vegeta Baby deck. So, after going over the results from this weekend, what do we play for our upcoming event if we want to do well?

Janemba has shown that in the past two events it is a top tier contender, but my personal experience lends me to believe that a variant of the Broly deck will be refined further this weekend, making it the top choice. The deck has quickly shown it's a force to be reckon with, and players still are not prepared for it. Forum posts on the Facebook Discussion group keep suggesting it to be unbeatable. That's up for debate, but this weekend did show that's not going to always be the case.

Regardless, if you want better results, one can never substitute experience. Personal preference and play style should also come into factor over what people just spout as the top tier deck. Go in with something you're comfortable with. If you are not already playing a top tier deck, and you want to make the switch, that's perfectly fine, but get enough games under your belt to make it worth it. If you don't, you could catch yourself off guard from a deck that you didn't expect, and I believe that's always a possibility.

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This is something I ran at a recent 16 local person event (4 rounds with Top 4). It's a fun deck to play, as many people still haven't played against Captain Ginyu and can be easily overwhelmed by him. I had a really solid run with the deck, only losing by one life in Top 4 against a Blue/Green Vegeta being out combo'd for 5k.

Strategy:
The idea of this deck is to push out constant damage every turn while building up a board, then pushing an early "all-in" to win the game. Even if the opponent has a lot of cards in their hand, if you catch them early enough, you're going to auto combo them when they can't afford to pay for all the combo costs.

When starting with the deck, you're going to want to mulligan for as many copies of Sorbet, Avenging Frieza, and Dodoria as possible. These are the cards that are going to win you the game with the final push with a Double-Strike awakened Captain Ginyu leader. Also, if you see any Ginyu force members, send them back in the mulligan as well as we want them in our life to make the most out of Ginyu's power. Use Ginyu power every turn (even if you start first in the game - it can make a big swing).

Don't block with Sorbet unless you're going to lose - use his power and Dodoria to push final damage as much as possible (discarding a 5k combo or a Crusher Ball can during to 10-15K easily). Attack with Burter, Recoome, Sui, and Appule to apply early damage every turn.

When you play an Avenging Frieza, keep him out to evolve to a Hellish Terror towards the end of the game to help push out end game damage.

If they attack when you have 5 energy out, play out a Mecha-frieza to win the game (keep an energy open for a Crusher Ball - also be aware of an open Blue energy as Senzu Bean hurts this strategy). You don't really need Captain Ginyu since you usually win on T4 or T5 tops, but he's fun to include in the deck if it goes that far as alone he can attack with double strike and 30k.

If you have the promo Mecha-Frieza, he can be in this spot as well since he can get rid of a key combo card and lets you know if you should go all in on a combo or not.

Use Crusher Balls conservatively on low energy cost Battle cards, and save them for higher cost characters. There are a few exceptions to this rule, like Saiyan Cabba or Assailant Vegeta. If you can, always keep an energy open to bluff the Crusher Ball, as needed. When you do this, a lot of opponent's play more cautiously, and because of that you're going to notice the games end up going more in your favor.

Sideboarding depends on many factors, but generally I have a basic strategy when utilizing it for this deck. When sideboarding here, against control swap out the 3x Son Goten for another Elite Force Captain Ginyu and 2x Furthering Destruction Champa (although three Furthering Destruction Champa would be acceptable too). If they lack Battle Card removal, add in the two Full-Power Frieza. If you have a feeling you're going to start second (or the last game you went a bit defensive), swap in two of the Jacos for Elite Force Captain Ginyu and a Ginyu Force Jeice.

Overall, this is a really fun deck that's different to play with, especially if you want to catch people off guard with something different.

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